Why are we seeing an explosion in university cheating scandals?

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Why so harsh? Like so many other law and order issues, the punishment is supposed to “provide a visible and meaningful deterrence” to those seeking to make money this way, as the legislation overview states.

What’s actually going on?

The term “contract cheating” was coined in 2006, in a University of Central England paper identifying it as a possible “successor” to plagiarism, hitherto the primary concern in academic honesty among students.

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In mid November 2014, the issue of contract cheating exploded, with revelations that an online business called MyMaster was netting hundreds of thousands of dollars producing thousands of assignments and online tests for students at Australian universities.

This was the first in a series of academic honesty scandals, most recently the “Airtasker scandal” wherein students used the gig economy platform to pay for essays. Indeed, Airtasker, Fiverr and Upwork still offer essay writing services, with dozens of Facebook groups dedicated to essay and dissertation writing services.

Does the legislation make sense?

The draft bill would make providing any part of a piece of work or assignment, sitting an exam or providing answers for an exam an offence. But this vague wording could see helpful colleagues targeted, says National Union of Students national president Desiree Cai.

“Students, tutors, family or friends or who have helped too much could be affected. The legislation needs to be made more specific to commercial contractors,” she says.

Determining the line between legitimate study support services and cheating activity have been highlighted as an issue by stakeholders for universities.

Who gets the blame?

Students who cheat will not be targeted under the draft legislation, with laws relying on universities’ own sanctions and integrity policies. But universities have been historically soft-handed when dealing with fee-paying students who cheat. When 36 students at Macquarie University were found to use ghostwriting services in 2015, the only punishment implemented was a dreary “ethics assessment”.

University of Melbourne’s deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard James says cheating and plagiarism was “unacceptable”, saying the university worked to make sure “students understand the importance of academic integrity”.

“We are particularly supportive of the government focusing on the interventions that universities are not able to undertake themselves, such as targeting commercial contract cheating providers,” he tells Crikey. Websites which publish cheating ads, both nationally and internationally, could be blocked under the new laws and subject to punishment.

Cai says students who deliberately and actively searched out ghostwriters and others to take their exams for them should not be held legally accountable.

“Universities are the ones who manage all breaches of academic integrity and are the best to deal with breaches,” she says, adding all penalties and sanctions should be proportionate and on a case-by-case basis.

Why are things getting so bad?

TEQSA, the university and TAFE regulator, recently put out a practice note on how to protect integrity. It situates academic misconduct in the context of “an increasingly commercialised, internationalised and highly competitive higher education sector”.

Indeed, a two-year, government funded project on academic integrity concluded that “the commercialisation of higher education”, and constant uncertainty about funding, had created “a perfect storm” for the proliferation of contract cheating.

Intense competition at all levels, a dependence on international student revenue, and a focus on retention and graduate employability have contributed to compromised teaching and learning environments. Facing precarious job markets after graduation, and positioned as fee-paying “customers”, many students are taking “transactional” approaches to learning, with some outsourcing their work altogether. The findings from this project provide clear evidence that contract cheating is a systemic problem that requires a sector-wide response.

The study interviewed 1147 staff members and just over 14 thousand students across eight universities — the transactional nature of higher education was a recurring theme. One staff member argued that “the upsurge in third-party cheating is due to students’ perception of university degrees as a commercial transaction due to university management’s focus on the business of education, such that marketing of university ‘products’ becomes more important than the education process itself”.

One student agreed that university was seen less about acquiring knowledge, and more “as a user-pays system to get the degree. The degree will get the job, or the extended visa for the masters, the job, etc … It’s about getting passes, getting through the process — hence, little attachment to the ethics of cheating …”

Cai agrees that the rise in contract cheating is thanks to the commercialisation of academia. To combat cheats, she says, universities must change their approach to education.

“Increasingly, universities are being seen as degree factories and service providers. Students are seen as consumers over learners.”

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About the Authors

Charlie writes chiefly about industrial relations, politics, culture and social services. Prior to Crikey he worked in various roles across government and unions and was a researcher for RN's the Daily Planet. He hosted the Alternative History on Triple R radio, and is a regular guest and occasional host on Breakfasters. He spent the 2019 election in Warringah, covering the fight for Tony Abbott''s seat.

Amber has been a reporter for The Age, writer for ABC Comedy’s Tonightly, and creator of student talk show The Struggle. She was awarded the Jacoby-Walkley scholarship in 2018, and was an Associate Producer at Nine News.

21 thoughts on “Why are we seeing an explosion in university cheating scandals?”

DF

Is there a breakdown in the stats on the percentages of domestic versus international students caught cheating? I hear anecdotally of international students who are barely English-literate being under pressure from their high fee-paying parents for a return on their investment, and to avoid family shame.
Decreasing contact hours and increasing on-line “attendance” at lectures also contribute to students’ (domestic and international) inclination to cheat.

1984AUS

I know of fellow lecturers who have quit rather than pass full fee paying students who can barely speak English. I refused to pass any assignment that was not up to scratch despite the admin expectations.

The Curmudgeon

ajnabi

Over the last couple of decades university management structures have been successful in unleashing and imposing a culture of reductionist-transactional exchange and corporate discourse on the diverse ecologies of knowledge. It’s cutting down the rainforest of ideas, filling in the wetlands of thought and the geography of diversity, and constructing pine plantations of conformities. In this wider sense, where is the greater threat to academic integrity coming from ? Don’t blame the symptom of students for engaging in similar transactional behaviour – blame the disease on the system, and the neo-liberal management ideology that drives it.

Universities need to take ownership of this problem that they have created before it completely ruins the ecology of knowledge and the intellectual inheritance of future generations. But unfortunately I cant’ see that this isn’t going to happen in the current political environment, without something getting broken.

joannamendelssohn

As with many of the problems of modern universities, the rise of cheating is easily linked to the culture of managerialism. Small tutorials of 12 students (or less) have been replaced with tutorials of 35 or more. Most teaching staff are now casuals on short-term contracts, sometimes working between two universities because they don’t get paid in non-teaching times – nor are they paid to closely and rigorously mark essays.
This has arisen at the same time as new technology makes cheating so much easier. I caught my first online cheats when Google was new and students tried scissors & paste plagiarism. After universities responded with Turnitin the rise of the contracted “original” essay was almost inevitable.
The solution is one the bureaucrats won’t like. Shrink class sizes so that lecturers can easily see the difference between the student they know and the work submitted (this also helps when checking ID in exams). Have graduated assessment tasks so that the first two (with feedback) are effectively working drafts for the final big one. It goes without saying that this also needs more time allocated for staff to mark.
None of this is cheap, which is why it won’t happen . Instead we’ll have more ritual complaints about the decline of the system….

1984AUS

It’s simple, full fee paying students who can barely speak English get what they pay for. Having been a law faculty marker as well as a TESOL teacher of adults I am well aware of the degree buying industry.

joannamendelssohn

One of my worst plagiarists was a USA masters student with her first degree from a prestigious university. She had a sense of entitlement that was a wonder to behold.
When international ESL students cheat it seems to be more linked to insecurity & fear of failure, plus an awareness of how much their families have sacrificed for their education.
We need to get the foundations right, to make sure that students don’t start their actual degrees until they know what they’re doing (and why) – as well as having the language skills.
Curiously, the best undergraduates I taught were never school leavers. They were all mature age (21 and over) who had undertaken the excellent UNSW university preparation program run for those who haven’t matriculated. None of them were cheaters. Maybe a version of this course should be incorporated into every undergraduate degree.

124C4U

I wonder how much the old “Play Fair” ethic comes into it?
When I were a Lad it was hammered into me/us that cheating and lying were wrong and would get you nowhere.
This thought did not apply to all Nationalities and groupings. Or for that matter all “classes”.
However life has shown what a load of bulldust that was.
So cheat on dear students and the Universities who tolerate it, may your bank balance ever increase until the Govt. of Idiocracy rules the crumbling world.

TheRabidHamster

My worst experience was a recently graduated Engineer who was sent to work on a project I was running. I don’t know if he cheated in his studies or whether incompetent nincompoops can now graduate. Either way I had to sack him for his and the rest of the teams safety.

Been Around

1984AUS

Just another side effect of the Coalition’s antagonism towards funding tertiary education. Howard said no votes in funding tertiary education, which is evidenced by research which reveals those with a tertiary education being less inclined to vote conservative.

”In 2011, the last year for which full international data is available, Australia’s public funding of universities ranked thirty-third out of the thirty-four OECD member countries.

Governments across the OECD spent an average of 1.1 per cent of GDP on universities; Australia devoted just 0.7 per cent.

Six countries – including Canada, at 1.6 per cent – spent at least double Australia’s proportion of national income.

Finland, at 1.9 per cent, tops the list.

At a conference of university leaders in early 2013, Tony Abbott promised “relative policy stability” in higher education if he became prime minister.

A year later, Universities Australia began its first Abbott-era budget submission by welcoming “the undertaking of the government to preserve funding arrangements for higher education, including the commitment not to make further cuts to the sector.”

old greybearded one

Commercialism and a fool’s paradise for those universities. Mighty soon it will be seen that the degrees are crap and noone will pay to come there. I am happy to see contract services slammed, but any student who ghosts a serious assignment or exam should be out on their ear and if they are from overseas, their visa should be revoked, no matter where they are from.

Onyamarx

Insightful discussion. Two more comments: which VC (CEO) will risk market share by promoting their institution as ‘The university which is toughest on cheats’ plus, in my experience, the students most likely to cheat are those who barely meet the university’s woefully poor entry requirements. That said, who was the VC who had to resign over plagiarism?

The Curmudgeon

mark e smith

If youve wanted students to learn and also for them to have confidence in their marks compared to others you’ve always had to have some in house tests and exams. A lot of the problem has at its core too much off site assessment material.

In my honours year there was a core subject done by lecture, tutorial essay and end of subject exam. Also each tutorial had five or ten pieces for reading of which two or three were core. At the end of each tutorial was an easy 15 to 20 question ABCD type test which accumulated to ten percent of final mark. The questions were cleverly done so that while easy you’d most likely only know the answer if you’d read the core texts for that week.

It allowed the teacher to keep track of how people were going and functioned to embarrass people into reading the core texts as the discussion tended to focus around them.

Such a system would also high light discrepancies between class tests and essays.

joannamendelssohn

The reason universities have cut out this kind of rigorous assessment schedule is that management isn’t prepared to pay for the staff to undertake it. Thanks to reduced government funding over many years they made the decision to go for mass numbers & high fees

poulou

In my (decade or so) of experience, unis have been pretty open to staff about their reasoning. It goes like this: the most importan thing for academics to do is to publish and/or get research funding (publication used to be emphasised more than getting grants, now it’s vice versa), so teaching must be as small a part of the workload as possible. Sessional staff help reduce the teaching workload, but they cost a lot, so the best option is to make assessment as “efficient” (the word that’s normally used) as possible. That means assessing students as little as possible with the least amount of qualitative assessment possible.

Academics are forced to spend time learning about new types of computer-based education. These are promoted as if they are educationally valuable but are essentially intended to save academics time. In nearly all cases it is far easier to cheat on online assessments than it is in long essays and exams, plus the quality of assessment becomes very poor. MANY students, in many areas of study, are getting marks (and passing) just by ticking online boxes.

I’m basically happy with how my (GO8) university handles cases of cheating, and it definitely hasn’t gone up recently, but the problem is never going to be solved if no-one is given time or resources to genuinely assess students’ work.

Of course, when it comes to international students, everyone is swindling everyone else.